First Punch
I wanted to design a tavern brawl game ever since I was a wee lad. I usually pictured the results as something like a miniatures game—maybe something like an early minigame I read about but never played from White Dwarf magazine, or something like Yaquinto’s Swashbuckler, in which pirates and musketeers circle each other while throwing mugs and flipping tables.
But when Mat Smith mentioned that he wanted to design a tavern brawl game a couple years ago, I started thinking about something on a different track. After all, D&D already handles round-by-round character-vs.-character action. Any game that was too close to D&D’s level of play would have to account for a lot of the same character and world elements that D&D handles.
So I decided on a more abstract game. All the good parts of a tavern brawl show up in character abilities (hiding under tables, backstabbing, surprise attacks from hand crossbows) or attack actions (hit ‘em with a chair, punch ‘em in the kisser, zap ‘em with an eldritch blast) or special actions (prove you’re tough by taking a drink in the middle of the brawl). You win by doing a lot of damage to the other characters, not by surviving longest—if your Adventurer gets knocked out, you’ll lose a few victory points but still get to throw another Adventurer into the mix, so no one ever gets completely knocked out of the game.
Inn-Fighting Ain’t Three-Dragon Ante
Despite appearances, Inn-Fighting is not a sequel to Three-Dragon Ante. The two games are packaged the same, cost the same, and have the same designer’s name on the cover. But thematically, they’re not much alike.
Three-Dragon Ante rewards long-term strategy. Yeah, there’s a lot of luck in the game, but if you’re inclined, you can increase your prospects by weighing the multiple possible approaches to each hand/gambit, and how those approaches will set you up for success in future hands.
Inn-Fighting isn’t like that. Long term strategizing usually isn’t in the cards, and it’s definitely not in the dice. If you keep track of all the possibilities offered by your action cards, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding silly mistakes… but I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘stragety,’ as we like to say in the Wizards office. Inn-Fighting delivers beer’n’pretzels whackiness, with one face on the die actually showing a mug of ale!
Inn-Fighting Strategy
True, I just said that long-term strategizing isn’t what Inn-Fighting is about, but that was in comparison to Three-Dragon Ante. There are a couple of related strategies that I do try to keep track of.
It’s About the Lead: When you take the lead in the game, you become target #1. Special powers target you, and Ale actions drink away your victory points.
Occasionally, if I have two options for scoring victory points, I choose the option that looks good but doesn’t look likely to put me in the lead. The variability of scoring from low or high damage attacks means that I often as not get it wrong, but there are some games when I’ve been able to float just under the danger ceiling until I have the chance to win.
Staying Alive May Not be the Answer: If you’re about to be knocked out by a player who won’t win the game by knocking you out, and everyone else will win the game by knocking you out, you might end up better off not spending a precious defensive action card to stay alive. Take the embarrassment of getting knocked out by someone else who isn’t winning yet, lose the victory points for having your Adventurer knocked out, and hope that your next Adventurer has better luck.
Similarly, even early in the game, you may look at the situation on the table and realize that your Adventurer is singularly unsuited to compete with the bruisers the opposition is throwing at you. You never get to turn your nose up at successful defense rolls that keep you from getting knocked out; however, if you judge that your current Adventurer doesn’t have the firepower to keep up with the rest of the table, you might avoid playing defensive action cards altogether, in order to save them for an Adventurer who does have a chance to do some real damage.
Tactics
These tricks don’t qualify as strategies, but they might help.
Special Actions May Not Be the Answer Either: Don’t be too quick to snatch up the dice when it’s your turn and you’ve got 3 Luck or 3 Ale showing. Every once in a while, there’s a particular attack you really need to score a lot of points or to win the game, and that attack is showing next to the Luck or Ale. You may not get the same attack when you reroll the Brawl Dice after taking your Special Action, so it can be worth considering whether you value the chance to make the right attack more than drawing a card or drinking victory points.
Drink Your Own Health: If you’re in the lead when it’s your turn and there are 3 or more Ale showing, you’re often better off drinking away your own victory points to prevent the next opponent from doing the drinking. Most people keep track of that when they are down hit points and can actually use the healing, but sometimes you’ll want to drink your own victory points away just to prevent the next opponent from healing using your VP.
Regrets, I Have a Couple
Most everyone asks me whether the damage that your Bystanders inflict with their defense dice goes into your victory points. Yes it does, and I’m sorry the rules aren’t clear about that. All damage that your characters do to other characters goes into your victory points. Damage inflicted by your Bystanders isn’t going to be enough to win you the game, because even if that damage got you above 20 victory points, you’d still have to damage an Adventurer on your turn. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had 23 or 25 victory points and still managed to lose the game because I haven’t been able to damage an Adventurer on my turn.
My other regret is that the action card Second Swing has a typo. It shouldn’t be talking about rerolling the Brawl Dice you used for the attack; it should say “Reroll the d20 you used to make the attack.” In other words, you play Second Swing when you’ve rolled a 1 on your attack roll, or rolled low damage when what you need is to roll high.
The Iron Dwarf Variant
This variant can result in a much longer game. If you’d rather play one long game instead of two or three short games, try this out: Instead of awarding victory immediately to the player who’ scored at least 20 victory points and has damaged an opposing Adventurer on their turn, wait and award victory to such a player at the start of their next turn if they still have 20 or more victory points. This gives every opponent a chance to knock out the Adventurer who’ about to win.
The Design Your Own Adventurer Option
If you’ve picked up the game, you’ve probably noticed the card that promises you can come to our website and find out how to add your D&D PC to the game as an Adventurer. That feature isn’t up and running yet, and it’s my fault. My original idea of how to handle the conversion was stupid and wasn’t going to work. Luckily, Logan Bonner had a better idea a week ago and is putting together the basics of his approach, so we’ll have something tinkered together for you soon!
About the Author
Rob Heinsoo was born in the Year of the Dragon. He started playing D&D in 1974 with the original brown box. More recently, he designed Three-Dragon Ante, Inn-Fighting, and a couple incarnations of the D&D Miniatures skirmish system. He’s the lead designer of 4th Edition and captains the D&D mechanical design team.
